The State of The Art of DeFi Agents

2025 Jul 20

The intersection between web3 and AI is giving rise to a new paradigm of autonomous interactions, promising to reshape how we use blockchains, how much time we spend on research, and how many decisions are made by humans.

By embedding intelligent decision‑making, agents can tirelessly scout liquidity opportunities, react to market shifts in real time, and even negotiate complex lending arrangements, all with minimal human oversight.

Why DeFi creates the perfect breeding ground for autonomous agents

By combining permissionless 24/7 markets with composable smart contracts and a wealth of transparent, machine‑readable onchain data, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is the perfect enviroment for AI agents to deploy capital, execute multi step strategies atomically, and adapt in real time without human gatekeepers or jurisdictional barriers. Add in low entry hurdles, global liquidity incentives and verifiable performance tracking, and you have an open source laboratory where next‑generation “money legos” can be stitched together into smarter financial agents.

Based on this assumptions about DeFi being the perfect breeding ground for agentic experiments, I started creating a list of DeFi agents that I find interesting and believe are worth exploring. This article just includes agents which are already deployed and capable of performing actions on behalf of their users on EVMs. The list is not a comprehensive one, it just includes agents I have curated and believe could have potential to continue maturing.

Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal research and opinions. It’s not financial advice, and none of these projects have sponsored this writeup.

At the end of this article, you can also find a glossary with brief explanations of some key terms that may sound niche.

ARMA from @gizatechxyz

Giza is one of the trending AI projects in the crypto landscape. They aim to enable non-custodial algorithmic agents that execute sophisticated DeFi strategies. Their first iteration is the ARMA agent that optimizes strategies across Base, delivering personalized, risk-adjusted yield for stablecoins (USDC for now).

ARMA continuously monitors leading protocols on Base (users can choose among Moonwell, Morpho, Aave, Euler, Fluid, Seamless Protocol, and Compound) and automatically relocates (rebalances) funds to the pools that offer better yields, making calculations that take into account not only the pool's APR but also protocol and ecosystem rewards.

All the calculations happen offchain, and the ARMA agent has just access to move users' funds among approved (curated) protocols through a smart account creation. Once the agent is funded, the user is able to choose the operating parameters. This is basically just choosing which protocols the ARMA agent will be able to operate with.

The ARMA 15% APR Distribution System implements a proactive reward mechanism that guarantees users receive a fixed 15% Annual Percentage Rate (APR). When the user wallet's performance falls below the 15% APR target, the agent automatically compensates by sending rewards in $GIZA tokens for the difference.

When we look at ARMA's fees, the agent takes a 10% performance fee. This fee applies only to the yield generated by the users' position.

ARMA only works with USDC on Base, but this is not a strict prerequisite to start. The agent accepts USDC deposits from any blockchain network and bridges them to Base. ARMA also provides monitoring tools to track the performance of users' positions.

Axal Yield by @getaxal

Axal Yield is an agent developed by the Axal team that is capable of allocating users' funds across DeFi protocols in order to provide them with risk‑adjusted yield strategies. The Axal Yield agent currently supports Ethereum Mainnet, Base, and Solana.

Axal strategies are categorized into different tiers: Conservative (5-10% target APY), Balanced (11-25% target APY) and Aggresive (26-100% target APY). Each tier has access to different strategies. The Conservative tier has access to Aave and Morpho; the Balanced tier has access to Kamino Single‑Sided LP, HyperEVM liquidity, and Felix Liquidation Premium; and the Aggressive tier has access to Kamino Multiply (leveraged JLP), looping & LSDFi stacks.

The Axal agent calculates the APY using a time-weighted average of returns, including all fees and costs, and annualizes it. Their team also provides its users with a desktop web app for agent setup, monitoring, and analytics.

In terms of fees, they charge between 15% and 25% of management fee (depending on the tier), and a withdrawal fee of 0.1% if a withdrawal is done within 72 hours of depositing the funds for the first time.

@BrahmaFi's Morpho and Surge & Purge Agents

Brahma is a protocol that allows users to interact with applications that help manage capital and lending onchain and offchain. Their suite of products is composed by the Brahma Account (a programmable crypto account for executing onchain actions that is available on 10+ networks) and the ConsoleKit (Brahma's developer platform that allows developers to build automated workflows and agents).

To show what is possible with the ConsoleKit developer platform, the Brahma team has been building two agents: The Morpho Agent and the Surge & Purge Agent.

The Morpho Agent

The Morpho Agent is an autonomous agent built on Base that actively seeks the best APYs (Annual Percentage Yield) and rebalances users' positions. Users can choose the frequency of adjustment for their positions, leveraging weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly adjustments.

The Morpho Agent executes transactions from the user's smart account. Users can set their preferences via chat interaction with the agent on https://agents.brahma.fi/.

In their latest release (v2), this agent will also be capable of auto-claiming rewards during rebalances and exits, and filter vaults by APY, liquidity, and curators.

The Surge & Purge Agent

The Surge & Purge Agent is a trading agent that monitors the market and is also capable of excecuting transactions to achieve the best trading opportunities on Base. This agent creates a sub-account for a Brahma account and is capable of analyzing user inputs and the market conditions to execute trades on approved markets.

If a surge agent is set up and the asset price drop significantly, the agent will increase the size of the order. If the price increases significantly, the agent will reduce the order size, thereby optimizing the trade.

Users can interact with this agent from https://agents.brahma.fi/surge-purge, choosing which assets they want to trade and the trading budget they want to allocate.

This agent charges 0.15% fees on successful swaps.

@FungiAgents

The Fungi agent recently emerged as a stablecoin (USDC) yield maximizer. Like the previous agents we have mentioned, Fungi also operates on Base. It optimizes yield across Aave, Morpho, Moonwell, and Fluid.

When a user activates a Fungi agent, it launches a smart account that links to the user's wallet or social login. It uses session keys that enable the agent to perform transactions within limits and preferences set by the user.

When using Fungi, the user can choose which protocols the agent can interact with, the max budget the agent can move per transaction, when the permissions expire, and whether the agent can reuse approvals or claim rewards (if any).

Every 24 hours, the agent runs an analysis of the protocols that support looking for APRs, rewards, slippage, gas, liquidity, and risk and if it finds a move that improves the yield for the user, it executes the transaction reallocating the capital. Depending on the user's balance (Silver: $0 – $1,000; Gold: $1,000 – $10,000; Platinum: $10,000+), the agent can scan for a better yield (up to 24x per day for Platinum users) and offer the user extra performance.

Right now, Fungi is not charging any fees to their users, no performance fee, no deposit or withdrawal fees and it also covers gas costs on behalf of the user.

Optimus by @autonolas

Optimus is part of the Autonolas' BabyDegen family of agents that are capable of performing actions like trading and portfolio management on behalf of its users. The Olas team describes Optimus as your agentic onchain asset manager, an AI agent that is capable of optimizing the DeFi experience for its users by maximizing returns.

Optimus works with ETH and USDC on the OP chain and is able to leverage Balancer, Uniswap, and Velodrome for their strategies.

About how it works, the Olas team reports they are pulling data from CoinGecko, automonously determining the most effective strategies due to market conditions to buy, sell, or hold specific assets.

Users can interact with Optimus by using a chat interface on the Pearl app. By using this app, users can choose specific protocols for the agent to interact with, adjust the agent risk exposure, and monitor current allocation and portfolio breakdown.

@ZyfAI_

The ZyfAI agent is another yield optimization solution that is capable of rebalancing users' funds across different protocols to optimize for the highest possible APY.

This agent, built on top of the Eliza V.1 framework, and when operates in Sonic with USDC.e and in Base with USDC. In terms of rebalancing, the agent checks daily to find the best opportunities using customizable parameters (TVL, APY, Slippage, Price Impact, etc.). Based on the different risk profiles (safe, yieldor or airdrop), the agent is granted with access to more or less protocols. Among the protocols the agent can interact with, the team mentions Among the protocols users can choose between Aave, Euler, Beets, Pendle, Silo, Penpie, Morpho and more.

ZyfAI also utilizes a smart account and session keys to grant the agent temporary access to a user's account, providing the agent with restricted permissions.

To interact with ZyfAI, users have a dashboard where they can set up the agent, curate the protocols and monitor the performance.

Regarding ZyfAI fees, their documentation indicates that rebalancing fees are covered by a paymaster that sponsors these fees.

Conclusion

I jumped into crypto back in 2019, and even then, the idea of agents seamlessly navigating DeFi felt like science fiction. Today, that fiction is real: our “open laboratory” of permissionless markets, composable contracts, and transparent data is exactly what these agents need to learn, adapt, and improve.

Watching us build standards, refine account abstraction, and harden security (sometimes by making hard mistakes) fills me with pride. Every protocol iteration, every audit, every hack and recovery has shaped an ecosystem where smart, autonomous strategies can finally shine.

As agents begin to explore real‑world assets (RWA) and bridge TradFi rails into DeFi, I expect many early experiments to fade, but the lessons they teach will fuel the next generation of tools and autonomous finance. That cycle of trial, error, and progress is exactly how we’ll unlock richer, more intuitive ways for anyone to trade, invest, or earn yield with minimal friction.

If you’re building an agent I haven’t covered here, or if you simply want to swap notes, drop me a line at hola@0xpili.xyz, I’d love to hear what you’re working on!

Thanks to everyone who read, critiqued, and pushed me to make this piece stronger. Specially to Fio, Martin, Mati, and Tadeo.

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